Sunday, March 18, 2018

Mukai Maromo of VivaVoce interviews William Kay on the topic of Climate Change. Mr Kay has been a militant critic of the anthropogenic catastrophic global warming hypothesis for twenty-five years. Beyond exposing the flawed science underlying this hypothesis the interview exposes the compelling economic motivations driving the Climate Change campaign.

Saturday, March 17, 2018

They came as slaves; vast human cargo transported on tall British ships bound for the Americas. They were shipped by the hundreds of thousands and included men, women, and even the youngest of children.

Whenever they rebelled or even disobeyed an order, they were punished in the harshest ways. Slave owners would hang their human property by their hands and set their hands or feet on fire as one form of punishment. They were burned alive and had their heads placed on pikes in the marketplace as a warning to other captives.

We don’t really need to go through all of the gory details, do we? We know all too well the atrocities of the African slave trade.

But, are we talking about African slavery? King James II and Charles I also led a continued effort to enslave the Irish. Britain’s famed Oliver Cromwell furthered this practice of dehumanizing one’s next door neighbor.

The Irish slave trade began when 30,000 Irish prisoners were sold as slaves to the New World. The King James I Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.

Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white. (more...)

History is rife with might have beens. What if Columbus had made it to India? What if John F. Kennedy hadn’t been assassinated? What if Hitler had won the Second World War?

History is also rife with people trying to cover up missteps that may tarnish reputations when posterity takes a cold hard look back.

That, according to author Andrew Morton, is what the British royal family, Winston Churchill, former British prime minister Clement Attlee and even American president Dwight D. Eisenhower were trying to do with the Windsor File, a group of documents found just after the war ended.

They were found, Morton writes, in a “metal canister which had been buried on a German estate” that painted “an astonishing portrait of a man who was disaffected with his position, disloyal to his family and unpatriotic towards his country.”

The story he tells in 17 Carnations: The Royals, The Nazis, and the Biggest Cover-Up in History is the story they didn’t want us to know. And the “what if” questions it evokes: What if Edward VIII had stayed on the throne instead of abdicating? What if Queen Mary and other royals had not vetoed his marriage to a respectable British woman? Would the Second World War have been avoided? (more...)

Quebec City, a UNESCO World Heritage treasure trove, is home to breathtaking landscapes, historical sites, and a wide selection of mouthwatering cuisine. From the Old Capital lined with cobblestone streets to the waterfall on the Route de la Nouvelle-France, the French province is a masterpiece of cultural beauty. It is also home to the country’s first publicly known “identity boxing club” founded by radical far-right movement, Atalante Quebec.

The secret gym is hidden in plain sight, accessible only to the group’s members. Those who step through its doors are greeted by the framed pictures of Friedrich Nietzsche, Julius Evola, and Dominique Venner — 19th and 20th century scholars now embraced by the far-right nationalists. The gym’s logo, a colosseum with protruding spears, was emblazoned on the opposite wall with the words La Phalange - Club De Boxe Identitaire (The Boxing Identity Club).

The gym was founded in June 2017, when Atalante Quebec gave a candid interview to a Serbian online media outlet announcing plans to start a “boxing identity club” for its members in Quebec City. The announcement caught the attention of French-Canadian media outlets, who raised concerns about the organization’s lack of transparency, and its newfound potential for spreading hateful ideologies while also training groups of young ultra-nationalists for violent combat. (more...)

Friday, March 16, 2018

An Ottawa high school teacher has been charged with sexual offences that occurred at a local school between 2014 and 2016.

55-year-old Robert Lavergne was teaching at St. Patrick's High School of the Ottawa Catholic District School Board at the time. Today, he was charged with sexual assault and sexual exploitation of a female under the age of 18. Lavergne is scheduled to appear in court on April 25.

In a statement, the Ottawa Catholic School Board said it is "deeply sorry" to learn that a teacher has been charged. The teacher has been suspended and a letter has been sent home to parents.

“The number one priority for our Board is the continued safety and well-being of each student. We will continue to cooperate with the police in their investigation of this matter. As a Catholic community, we will pray for all the persons affected by this difficult situation. I truly regret that such conduct has allegedly occurred at one of our schools.” said Denise Andre, OCSB Director of Education, in a statement. (more...)

Phillip Kravetsky – who’s well known in Toronto’s Jewish community as a family law mediator, psychotherapist, teacher, family man and DJ – is being investigated by the Toronto Police Service on a child sexual assault complaint.

The 51-year-old Torontonian was arrested on March 13, after police were called in to investigate a claim that a child was assaulted in the Lawrence Avenue and Bathurst Street area of the city.

Kravetsky is charged with sexual assault and sexual interference and is scheduled to appear in court on April 27.

Although police released Kravetsky’s photo and a request for information from anyone who might have any details related to the case, Toronto Police Const. Jenifferjit Sidhu said that, “In order to protect the identity of the victim, we cannot provide any further details.”

According to a police press release, Kravetsky was arrested by members of the Child & Youth Advocacy Centre, a group that partners child abuse investigators from the Toronto Police Service with community and government agencies, including the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto and Jewish Family & Child. (more...)

From Seattle to Orlando and Los Angeles to Boston, white supremacists are displaying large banners from highway overpasses and in other highly visible locations as part of an effort to promote their groups and ideologies.

While white supremacists have been using banners for some time, the number of banners deployed in the past ten months marks an unprecedented trend, according to new data from ADL’s Center on Extremism.

From May 2017, when the recent proliferation began, through March 12, 2018, ADL counted 72 instances of white supremacists hanging banners from locations such as roof tops and highway overpasses. That’s an average of seven incidents per month.

Groups associated with the alt right segment of the white supremacist movement are responsible for the bulk of this activism, and accounted for 73 percent of the incidents.

On last year’s St. Patrick’s Day, progressives of Irish ancestry organized the first “Irish Stand” rally at Riverside Church in New York City to protest the xenophobic and racist policies of the Trump administration. The rally represented an energizing shift in Irish American social consciousness back toward an original culture of resistance.

This year’s Irish Stand is on March 16. It’s a different sort of gathering than typically is held each year—the well-known raucous St. Patrick’s Day parades and festivities that include traditional music and dance with the aim of honoring the more than 70 million people worldwide who claim Irish heritage, over 33 million of whom are U.S. residents.

The history of the Irish diaspora is often given short shrift, even among Irish Americans. I’ve received more than a few odd glances when bringing up the Irish experience of British colonialism on St. Patrick’s Day.

The Irish endured centuries of British colonial rule, including land confiscation, the suppression and near eradication of their native language, second-class status imposed through the notorious Penal Laws, and forced migration. Irish historian Tim Pat Coogan contends that the Great Famine, which brought the largest wave of Irish immigrants to the United States, was more akin to genocide than a natural disaster. Between 1845 and 1855, an estimated 1 million Irish perished from starvation and disease, and more than a million others fled through emigration.

In telling the story of Irish America, one must grapple with 19th-century Irish Americans having embraced a white racial identity, as historian Noel Ignatiev notably does in his seminal text, How the Irish Became White. Like other critical whiteness studies scholars, including David Roediger, Ignatiev builds off W.E.B. Du Bois’ assertion in Black Reconstruction that Irish Americans identified as white for the “public and psychological wage” it conferred them. In short, Irish Americans sought social advancement through America’s white supremacist racial caste system. (more...)

Recent events give Canadians the impression that our federal diplomats are not only incompetent but in the bag for the Liberal Party of Canada.

The most recent example of cringe-worthy bureaucratic stupidity came on Monday when the visiting delegation from Belgium was met at an official event with a German flag.

The Belgian king and queen planned their trip to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of Canadian troops liberating Belgium during the First World War. Canadians were once again instrumental in defeating the Nazi’s and freeing Belgium during the Second World War.

Our Belgian allies wanted to thank Canada for its historic contributions to peace and freedom.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, apparently, was not interested in meeting the Belgian royal couple, as his father Pierre Trudeau had as prime minister in 1977. On that visit, the Belgian queen planted a tree on the grounds of Rideau Hall to celebrate the Canadian-Belgian friendship.

This time around, small flags were used to identify the 1977 tree — except, whoever’s job it was to bring a Belgian flag accidentally brought a German flag, causing a frenzy among the flabbergasted Belgian media. (more...)

Only in his dreams could Hitler have imagined the blatant homosexualizing of the German Wehrmacht. What Hitler could only dream of, the United States is poised to make fact, a scant sixty-six years after fighting a costly and bloody war to defeat Hitler and the Nazis.

Before I get ahead of myself, let me point out that the title of this article, and the article itself, are meant to be attention getting, but do not constitute a spurious ad hominem attack on homosexuality; they are designed to bring attention to historical facts that are of profound importance to the future of America (and the world).

To give credit where it is due, I first became aware of much of the material presented here after reading “The Pink Swastika” (4th edition 2002), by Scott Lively and Kevin Abram. The entire book can be accessed for free online... My reaction to the book was similar to Scott Lively’s reaction, “When I initially learned the truths set forth in [“The Pink Swastika”] I was first astonished and then angered.”

At the outset of this article let me reiterate that Communism and Fascism (of which Nazism is a subset) are both Far Left ideologies. That is not to say that they are “like peas in a pod;” they are not — nonetheless they are both left-wing, top-down, big-government social engineering movements.

Comparing the two is not like “apples and oranges,” but rather like comparing “oranges and tangerines.” Many of the left-wing’s “rank and file” are unaware that fascism is a left-wing doctrine, but their puppet-masters are well aware of it, and work in collusion with other Far Left doctrines — “united in hate,” as Dr. Jamie Glazov puts it.

The reporter/author Oriana Fallaci (1929-2006), who certainly knew the Left very well, wrote in her book “The Force of Reason” (2004), “…there are moments when I curse myself for not having understood it earlier: for having let myself be fooled by the two soccer-teams for so long. …It is a long-term ruler this Left that gave birth to Mussolini then Hitler, and always maintained its bond with their disciples. This Left which has always given trouble with its excesses and ambiguities, its brutalities and duplicities….”

An obvious place to start on the subject of homosexuality and the Nazis, is with Hitler himself. Was the Nazi leader, or Fuehrer (Führer), a homosexual? Although Hitler and the Nazi leadership went to great lengths to hide and/or destroy any incriminating evidence, the evidence that remains strongly suggests that Hitler was indeed a homosexual. At the very least, he was an extreme case of sexual dysfunction. (more...)

Thursday, March 15, 2018

Speaking following a meeting with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, prime minister Xavier Bettel took aim at what he saw is the unlevel playing field in tax rates in some EU countries.

Without directly referencing Ireland’s 12.5% corporate tax rate, Mr Bettel said it is politically untenable to have workers charged up to 45% in tax when companies pay little or no tax at all.

“The fact is, competition is good but it must be fair,” he said. “Competition is good within the EU. I prefer to have my competitor in the EU. It is important to have a level playing field and an international level playing field. This is the most important topic.

“Neither the Irish or Luxembourg accepts that a company pays no taxes. The fact is we want fair competition between countries. We don’t want to be harming Europe. How should I explain to someone working eight hours a day paying 45% in tax at the end of the month when another company is paying no taxes. In the end I will have political problems if I support the view that some companies should pay no taxes.” (more...)

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

What do Torbay, Liverpool, Rochdale, Thurrock, Oxfordshire, Hampshire, Bristol and Somerset have in common? All have been the subject of serious case reviews published within the past five years in connection with child sexual exploitation. That’s without mentioning Professor Alexis Jay’s independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham.

In all nine regions, a clear picture emerges of a culture in which underage sexual activity is viewed as relatively harmless so long as it is perceived to be consensual.

To that growing hall of shame, we must now add Telford. According to an 18-month Sunday Mirror investigation, an estimated 1,000 girls suffered sexual exploitation and abuse in the Shropshire district over a period of 40 years.

As yet, there has been no formal investigation into child sexual exploitation in Telford and no full published report, but from the limited information already available we see the reappearance of several features found in reports from other regions.

First of all, we find the same complacent attitudes towards underage sex. The Sunday Mirror reveals that “Council files show social services, teachers and mental health workers were fully aware of what was happening but did little. They also failed to tell police.”

Why? Because, like their counterparts in Rochdale, Rotherham and Bristol, education and welfare professionals in Telford assumed that the girls were making what are sometimes called “lifestyle choices”. “Instead of seeing them as exploited victims, some council staff viewed them as prostitutes,” we are told. (more...)

CALGARY—Loblaw Companies Ltd. isn’t providing details as to why some Canadians have been singled out with requests to hand over additional personal information to secure their $25 gift card related to the alleged bread price-fixing scandal.

Customer outrage has fomented online as Canadians take to Twitter to express privacy concerns about the company’s decision to ask some to provide a scan of their driver’s licence or utility bill in order to receive the card. Some have also commented on the perceived irony of Loblaw’s apparent fraud prevention measure, given that the gift cards are a gesture of apology for deceiving the public.

“Wait. @LoblawsON wants me to send a scan of my driver’s licence to prove I am who I say I am to get that $25 gift card?? Wasn’t it you guys who committed the fraud,” tweeted a user with the handle Paul D’Hondt.

Such concerns are shared by privacy experts including Ann Cavoukian, expert-in-residence at Ryerson University’s Privacy by Design Centre of Excellence.

“I just think that is so outrageous. First of all, they’re at fault, they’re doing this to correct their misbehaviour,” she said.

She said a copy of a driver’s licence should not be requested for a gift card meant to appease customers for wrongdoing, given the card contains a licence number, photo, signature and other personal details. (more...)

Sunday, March 11, 2018

The Argentine Catholic Church announced Tuesday that it will hand over to a judge more than 100 certificates from baptisms performed in a chapel at a navy base that served as a clandestine torture centre during the country’s dictatorship.

Activists hope the information will help determine what happened to children taken from political prisoners at the centre and later illegally adopted, often by military families. Human rights groups say most of the detained biological parents were later killed.

“We firmly believe the Church should make every effort to contribute to the path of memory, truth and justice in all fields, especially given the gravity of the crimes against humanity committed during the years of state terrorism from 1976 to 1983,” the Argentine Episcopal Conference said in a statement.

The bishops said the decision was a response to “a longing of Pope Francis,” the Argentine pontiff who previously promised human rights groups that the church would hand over documentation to help clarify the crimes committed by the military regime. (more...)

The rush amongst the super-rich started after the key event of 2014; this single stunning event suddenly sparked that rush by the super-rich to buy nuclear-proof bunkers, and the rush has been nonstop since that event. Though many news-media in The West have reported on the existence of this suddenly booming market for luxurious and supposedly nuclear-proof bunkers, none has reported on what actually caused it — the event that had sparked it. In fact, that event is still a secret in The West — not publicly mentioned here; it is, practically speaking, banned from being publicly even mentioned, in The West. So: since that event is necessarily mentioned in this article, and is even linked-to here, so that the reader can see videos of it that were posted of it online while it was happening, and there is even “smoking gun” evidence showing government officials actually planning it, and covering it up, and blatantly lying about what they had done, this report, explaining why the super-rich rush now to buy nuclear-proof bunkers, violates that ban. As a consequence, probably none of the hundreds of major news-media in The West that this news-report is being submitted to for publication, will publish it. But perhaps a half-dozen of the small ones will publish it. After all: a few small news-media cannot have much impact. The government and media don’t need to fool everyone in order to succeed, but only to fool the vast majority of people. (However, maybe now they don’t any longer even need to continue worrying about public opinion, at all. So: maybe they no longer need to continue such bans. But they do continue them, perhaps simply out of institutionalized bad habit.)

Wherever you’re so fortunate as to be reading this: here is the reason why the market for luxurious deep-underground nuclear-resistant bunkers has so suddenly blossomed:

In February 2014, an extremely violent, and US-engineered but ‘democracy’-masked, coup in Ukraine on Russia’s very doorstep, was successfully culminated by its overthrowing Ukraine’s neutralist and democratically elected leader, and then by its installing there a rabidly anti-Russian government, out for Russian blood, just like Hitler had been, and, in fact, strongly inspired by him, in many ways, including an ethnic-cleansing campaign. Within less than a month, Russia responded to that coup by accepting the still predominantly Russian Crimea back into Russia. (Crimea had been part of Russia until the Soviet dictator had arbitrarily transferred it to Ukraine in 1954.) For Russia’s having done that, US President Barack Obama (and America’s foreign vassals) slapped economic sanctions against Russia and mobilized NATO troops and weaponry onto and near Russia’s borders — as if they wanted to out-do 1962’s Cuban Missile Crisis, which they are doing, but in reverse direction (against not America, but, this time, against Russia).

Friday, March 9, 2018

Canada has a reputation for being a relatively progressive state with universal, single-payer health care, various other social benefits, and strict gun laws, similar to many European countries but quite unlike the United States. It has managed to stay out of some American wars, for example, Vietnam and Iraq, portrayed itself as a neutral “peace keeper”, pursuing a so-called policy of “multilateralism” and attempting from time to time to keep a little independent distance from the United States.

Behind this veneer of respectability lies a not so attractive reality of elite inattention to the defence of Canadian independence from the United States and intolerance toward the political and syndicalist left. Police repression against communist and left-wing unionists and other dissidents after World War I was widespread. Strong support for appeasement of Nazi Germany, overt or covert sympathy for fascism, especially in Québec, and hatred of the Soviet Union were widespread in Canada during the 1930s. The Liberal prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, hobnobbed with Nazi notables including Adolf Hitler, and thought that his British counterpart Neville Chamberlain had not gone far enough in appeasing Hitlerite Germany. Mackenzie King and many others of the Canadian elite saw communism as a greater threat to Canada than fascism. As in Europe, the Canadian elite—Liberal or Conservative did not matter—was worried by the Spanish civil war (1936-1939). In Québec French public opinion under the influence of the Catholic Church hoped for fascist victory and the eradication of communism. In 1937 a Papal encyclical whipped up the Red Scare amongst French Canadian Catholics. Rejection of Soviet offers of collective security against Hitler was the obverse side of appeasement. The fear of victory over Nazi Germany in alliance with the USSR was greater than the fear of defeat against fascism. Such thoughts were either openly expressed over dinner at the local gentleman’s club or kept more discrete by people who did not want to reveal the extent of their sympathy for fascism.

Even after the Nazi invasion of the USSR in June 1941, and the formation of the Grand Alliance against the Axis, there was strong reticence amongst the governing elite in Canada toward the Soviet Union. It was a shotgun marriage, a momentary arrangement with an undesirable partner, necessitated by the over-riding threat of the Nazi Wehrmacht. “If Hitler invaded Hell,” Winston Churchill famously remarked, “I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” Once Hitler was beaten, however, it would be back to business as usual. The Grand Alliance was a “truce”, as some of my students have proposed to me, in a longer cold war between the west and the USSR. This struggle began in November 1917 when the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd; it resumed after 1945 when the “truce”, or if you like, the Grand Alliance, came to a sudden end. (more...)

Thursday, March 8, 2018

Two Canadian educational institutions this week faced blowback for campaigns intended to highlight the racial “privilege” of students.

The University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) put up posters encouraging students to “check their privilege” using a list of privileges such as “Christian,” “White,” “Heterosexual” and “Male.”

Meanwhile, B.C.’s School District 74 put up posters featuring school administration officials highlighting their own encounters with racism and privilege.

In one, district superintendent Teresa Downs stands next to a quote reading, “I have unfairly benefitted from the colour of my skin. White privilege is not acceptable.”

In another, district principal of Aboriginal education Tammy Mountain appears next to the quote, “I have felt racism. Have you?” (more...)

There is structural inequality in our society, but it has nothing to do with being Christian, white, heterosexual, or male. In Hitler's death camps, you could be all of those and end up just as dead as anyone else. I speak here of the Russians, Poles, and Serbs who were murdered in the millions by the Nazis. You say there are no Nazis in Ontario? Let me straighten you out on that one.

Across campus, when I was an undergrad, a chapter of the John Birch Society was founded by Paul Fromm, a proud lad of Franco/German extraction. He found common cause with holocaust denier Ernst Zundel and assorted campus Nazi sympathizers. A solid cohort of deniers and sympathizers were resident in my own college. A sizable group of ratline kids -- sons and daughters of Nazis and fascists from Axis countries coalesced around these ideologies. They shared Nazi material and openly discussed their bigoted views in the halls and dormitories of the college. They even cleverly adapted the identity politics developed by the Cultural Marxist college to their own efforts to obscure authentic civil rights and create artificial conflicts for exploitation. Were there any adults in the room to help form these youth in less sociopathic attitudes?

Well, the adults -- the dons, lecturers, and dean -- were creatures of their institution. That institution was powerfully funded and directed by the Freemasons, as I learned from the students and staff. I also learned that the parents of the ratline kids were also Freemasons. The Lodge was instrumental in assisting their immigration to Canada, positioning them in society, and ensuring their economic success. If you've read about the Nazi ratlines run by the Vatican, you would have a picture of the citizenship for sale, money laundering, and identity falsification that this entails. And, the "adults"? They diligently tended this garden of nettles, cultivating its toxins. My own don had all the markings of a CIA spook. I, myself, repelled bald attempts at recruitment by the Freemasons and thinly veiled induction into CIA spookery -- the kind that renders you mind-controllable and expendable. I walked away from this milieu with my integrity intact, although my dignity was much offended.

So, the structure of inequality in our institutions is not about if you are Christian, white, heterosexual (my don was homosexual), or male (many of the female students were recruited by the Eastern Star). It is about secret societies, illicit financial flows, and institutional corruption. And, if you resist that corruption, it's about integrity. If Canada had real journalists like Daphne Caruana Galizia and Jan Kuciak, this information wouldn't be hidden away in blogs like mine and obscured by misdirection such as the National Post's drivel. A real campaign to address inequality would focus on the 1% kleptocrats and oligarchs who murdered Galizia and Kuciak. The investigation into Honey Sherman's death may also cast its gaze in that direction. She was also a student at my college in that timeframe.

As the anointing ceremony ended, the giant screen filled with the words FordforLeader.com, the website where the former city councilor had earlier urged the congregation to sign up as Tory members.

“Go online … register, register your family and friends, because that’s the only way we can make a change in this province,” Ford told them. “And we will make sure — I can guarantee you we’ll make sure — the church has a voice. All the time.” (more...)

This is how social conservatism dies. False ecumenism, sliding into appropriation of orthodox Christian social teaching by deep state religious puppetmasters corrupts the natural appeal and rationality of authentic faith. Orthodox Catholics, Jews, and other family-based traditions get side-swiped and marginalized by vulgar charlatans. Gestapo General Reinhard Gehlen was an evangelical minister -- no friend to Christians.

Multinational companies shifted profits through Ireland – an accounting technique designed to avoid corporation tax - equivalent to almost a quarter of the country’s GDP between 2010 and 2015.

Profits diverted through Ireland far exceeded those diverted through other EU states, according to a report published by the European Commission on Wednesday, which examines tax rules in Belgium, Cyprus, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta and the Netherlands.

The Commission said that some businesses have exploited loopholes and different tax regulations across member states.

It pledged to fight “aggressive tax planning” that has conferred “unfair competitive advantages”.

In 2016 the EU Commission ruled that Ireland had given the US multinational Apple illegal state aid by allowing it to pay an effective 1 per cent corporation tax. (more...)

In a plot twist that rivals anything penned by the most astute screenwriters, the some of the same Hollywood elite who are proclaiming that “Time’s Up” for sexual assault in the industry are celebrating pederasty. As sexual assault and harassment allegations continue to mount against media giants such as Harvey Weinstein, and Hollywood elites wear “Time’s Up” pins and black at the Golden Globes and white roses at the Grammy Awards in “solidarity” with sexual assault victims, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has nominated a film celebrating pederasty for four Academy Awards. While Kevin Spacey was ousted from television and movie roles for allegations of engaging in sodomy with underage boys, the actors, directors and screenwriters of Call Me By Your Name will be walking the red carpet on “Oscar night” hoping to go home with one of the golden trophies.

Reviewers have lauded Call Me By Your Name as a “romantic marvel” and “sumptuous love story” in The Atlantic and “an erotic triumph” in The New Yorker. Lost amid the accolades about a “fairy tale” like portrayal of “young love” is the fact that the movie portrays an adult man engaging in sodomy with a teenage boy. In a more realistic assessment, a Boston Globe commentator said, Call Me By Your Name “is a deftly directed, beautifully photographed, wonderfully acted master class in sexual predation and abuse.” The commentator, herself a teenage victim of sexual abuse, warned that “[i]n real life and in the movie, these shouldn’t be thought of as sexy coming-of-age romances, deliciously painful trysts from which both partners emerge better for having known each other. When an adult grooms a teenager and engages her or him in a sexual relationship, it’s neither romantic nor consensual.” (more...)

The good news is that it is only a few Maltese who lack values and will do anything for money. Most Maltese are good-natured, law-abiding, good Christians with a very strong set of values.

The bad news is that the few Maltese with no values or with rotten values either lead our political parties or are oligarchical in their approach to the national economy and the sharing of the wealth that is currently being created. The major part of this wealth (circa 90 per cent) is in the hands of these few greedy souls, and our trade unions and party faithful stay silent.

Yet, in the last week, there have been a growing number of thinkers, writers, commentators and organisers of conferences holding speeches and writing commentaries and letters all converging on to a common theme. They are all converging to the concept and, to the criticism thereof, that the present government and oligarchs close to the government have lost all interest in common values to mankind in their wild gold rush, leaving behind the majority of Maltese wage earners, government employees, pensioners, farmers, fishermen and small shopkeepers.

In a couple of articles written earlier this year, especially in my vision for Malta to become a Republic of Light, I had indicated the basic immoral and unethical basis upon which our taxation system is built. Our financial services industry, gambling industry, passport sales to multi-millionaires, tax evaders and money launderers, and our system to attract foreigners to retire in Malta on low taxation of remitted incomes rather than low taxation on all their income have all caused damage to our reputation because of the weak or inefficient controls and the political scandals exposed by the Panama and Paradise Papers.

It’s true that all these activities were introduced, for the most part, by the former Nationalist governments, but were added to by the present Labour government. What was fundamentally unethical had been quite strictly administered under the Nationalists and, for this reason they managed to avoid too many reputational issues and undue scrutiny. (more...)

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

A retired Ottawa basketball coach facing a long list of historical sexual assault charges, has died. 75-year-old Donald Greenham died Sunday at home, after suffering a heart attack.

Ottawa Police say the investigation began in June 2016 when someone came forward with allegations .

They charged Greenham with offences including gross indecency and indecent assault.

Police say the allegations involve a time span in Ottawa of between 1972 and 1981 when Greenham was a teacher and coach with the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board. The charges relate to allegations involving male victims between the ages of 12 and 16.

At the time of his death, there were 19 separate complainants. (more...)

Vatican prosecutors have indicted the former president of the Vatican bank and his lawyer on embezzlement charges, holding them responsible for losses of more than 50 million euros ($62 million) from real estate sales.

The trial of Angelo Caloia and his lawyer, Gabriele Liuzzo, begins March 15. A third suspect died while under investigation.

The Institute for Religious Works said late Friday that Caloia and his lawyer were charged with alleged embezzlement and self-laundering between 2001 and 2008, when the bank disposed of “a considerable part of its real estate assets.”

The scam allegedly involved the suspects selling Vatican-owned real estate at under value prices to offshore companies that then resold the buildings at market rates, with the suspects allegedly profiting from the difference, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

The IOR, as the bank is known, is joining a civil case alongside the criminal trial to try to recover some of the losses. (more...)

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Fights broke out between white supremacists and protesters Monday as anti-fascist activists, students and community members converged in and around Michigan State University to counter a speech by white nationalist Richard Spencer.

Hours before the speech began, police blocked access to the venue as protesters, including some masked antifascists, gathered outside and hundreds marched toward the venue shouting, “Nazis go home!”

As some of Spencer’s supporters and people planning to attend the speech arrived on campus, masked protesters shouted obscenities at white supremacists and at police. A group of white nationalists marching down the road toward the speech venue — Pavilion for Agriculture and Livestock Education — were blocked by protesters. Shouts turned to punches thrown at protesters, but the group was forced by protesters away from the pavilion where Spencer later spoke.

More law enforcement officers arrived, lining both sides of the road leading into the venue, snapping cuffs on people and restoring calm.

But as others arrived to attend the speech, which was delayed past its planned 4:30 p.m. start time, a mob of protesters swarmed around them. A circle of law enforcement officers protected those wishing to go in, but two were pushed to the ground. Another man wanting to attend the event was pelted with sticks, dirt and cans by protesters.

Two were blocked from entering, despite the police escort. They bowed as they retreated, to jeers from the crowd. (more...)

NEWFOUNDLAND, PENNSYLVANIA — People across the world were shocked as hundreds of couples carrying AR-15 rifles filled a Pennsylvania church on Wednesday in a mass ceremony where their marriages were blessed and their firearms hailed as divine “rods of iron.”

Across social media and elsewhere, many shared photos of the spectacle in the belief that this was the latest manifestation of U.S. gun culture gone awry – a clear sign, perhaps, that right-wing Evangelical Christianity had jumped the shark. Mistaken captions misidentifying congregants as “Christians” contributed to the sentiment.

Lost amid the bemusement and outrage was the fact that this wasn’t just any church: this was the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary of Reverend Hyung-jin “Sean” Moon, a splinter group from the Unification Church founded by his father, the charismatic cult leader Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

During the ceremony – dubbed a “Cosmic True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humanity Book of Life Registration Blessing” – Hyung-jin prayed for “a kingdom of peace police and peace militia where the citizens, through the right given to them by almighty God to keep and bear arms, will be able to protect one another and protect human flourishing,” according to the Associated Press. (more...)

Sunday, March 4, 2018

The use of suspect gold to launder drug profits is well established. One example of such laundering activities concerns a rogue airline that had the reputation of flying anything to anywhere. Over a two-year period between 1989-91, the airline made four flights carrying gold bullion weighing 160 tonnes with a market value of two billion dollars. Each of the four flights carried boxes with twelve bars of gold to a box that overall weighed 41 tonnes per flight. All the boxes were palletised for easy loading and accompanied by a guard. The flights originated from Medellin, Columbia, and were airlifted to London and apparently cleared both ends without customs inspection. [1]

The amount of gold shipped was more than the gold reserves of most central banks. The question then arises: where did this gold originate? The likelihood is that it was part of the vast amounts of gold plundered in WWII by the Axis powers.

The story about what really happened to the loot plundered by the Nazis and Japanese during WWII remains one of the best-kept secrets of the last fifty years. Few outside of the charmed circle of initiated insiders possess any knowledge whatsoever of the true dimensions of what can be described as the biggest cover-up of all time.

But it is not just public awareness of what exactly “happened” to this plunder in the post war years that is the cause of supreme unease amongst the powers that be. It is the sheer magnitude of treasure forcibly confiscated by the Axis powers that causes trepidation. Were the actual dollar numbers involved to be revealed, it would lay bare an even more sensitive secret – one that has endured for a hundred or more years.

A decades long propaganda campaign had served to focus public attention on the gold stolen from governments – known as monetary gold – as a means of eclipsing from public view far larger amounts of privately held gold that was also stolen.

The heavy cloak of disinformation and double-talk had still another layer. By putting the spotlight on Nazi plunder from the very beginning, public attention was diverted away from the industrial scale looting undertaken by Japan’s special plunder teams known as the “Golden Lily.” And it is here that the real story dwells. (more...)

Last week it was reported that Paul Fromm, a white supremecist who has been involved with almost every neo-Nazi and racist movement of the past 50 years (from the Edmund Burke Society/Western Guard through the Heritage Front and up to Blood & Honour and Proud Boys today) had endorsed social-conservative Tanya Granic Allen for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. While it did take her about 24 hours, she rejected the endorsement and condemned Fromm.

More recently, another Progressive Conservative leadership candidate received the endorsement of an infamous hate-monger. In fact it isn't even the first time this individual has been linked to conservative politicians in the midst of a leadership race...

ARC has written about Kevin Johnston in the past, including his claims to have been assaulted by "Antifa" at a rally in Ottawa in June 2017 leading to the arrest of some individuals; many of the claims made by Johnston's were wildly inconsistent and were challenged by the police and the crown eventually dropped the charges against the four men citing lack of "credible" evidence.

Johnston, a perennial mayoral candidate with, shall we say, a creative understanding of the truth, is a well-known Islamophobe who uses his YouTube channel to vilify Muslims and immigrants and has encouraged acts of violence... (more...)

The former mayor of Burns Lake, B.C. and former membership chair of the BC Liberal Party has been charged with several sex crimes.

Luke Everett Strimbold is facing "numerous counts of sexual assault and related offences," RCMP said in a statement Friday.

Mounties did not immediately provide information on specifics of the charges, but said the crimes were alleged to have been committed in 2016.

Residents of Burns Lake say the alleged crimes include offences against children.

“I think we're all really shocked and of course we're really saddened and of course a little angered,” said Mary Teegee, executive director of child and family services at Carrier Sekani Family Services, which has facilities in Prince George, Vanderhoof, and Burns Lake.

“Everybody knows everybody in a small community, and of course there was a level of trust as he was the mayor of Burns Lake,” Teegee said. “There's a lot of feelings that we have because of the seriousness of the allegations.”

The 28-year-old served as mayor in the North-Central Interior village from 2011 to 2016, when he resigned saying he wanted to go back to school and spend time with family. Elected at the age of 21, he was the province's youngest mayor.

Strimbold was listed as the BC Liberal Party's membership chair up until after the allegations against him became public on Friday. By the afternoon, his name and position had been removed from the "Governance" page of the party’s website. (more...)